Mea Cracker

Dear Gumdrop:


Um, I guess I kinda sorta need to apologize for all my cracker grumblings. So... sorry. I will happily admit that baking homemade crackers was one of the most comforting things I’ve ever done. There was something so entirely honest and homely about it all. I was so content, I wound up dancing around my kitchen working with this unbelievably silken dough. It was one of my favourite challenges so far!

I chose this olive oil cracker recipe from 101 Cookbooks. An excuse to use the dough hook on my kitchen aid is never to be missed (although I’m in no hurry to drop the mixing bowl on my toe again anytime soon. My poor toe is still black and blue, but at least it goes with the purple polish). The dough itself was easier than pie and came together lickety-split. My absolute favourite part was shaping the dough and rubbing it with olive oil -- it was just this amazingly relaxing tactile experience. I actually felt connected to the food I was preparing.

Having let the dough rest, it was now time to roll ‘em out and splash on some flavour flourishes. I chose a few different toppings – sesame seeds, poppy seeds, cracked pepper and sea salt. The one tip i have is to roll the dough out to almost the desired thinness and then add the topping and finish rolling. It helped press the seeds and things in a bit more.

The other thing I did, which was probably just a misunderstanding of the directions was to bake the crackers on the cornmeal. It was a bit messy when eating, but I really adored that extra crunch.

I arrived at the cottage with some seven-year-old Canadian cheddar and some stinky gooey riopelle, which along with the delicious homemade crackers, made for a crowd-pleasing afternoon snack. My brother was impressed to learn I had made the ‘amazing flatbreads’ from his favourite restaurant. The old me may have jumped at the chance to call these the more impressive sounding ‘flatbread’, but the new me is dazzled by the honesty of ‘cracker’. After all, they even pleased my three-year old nephew’s discriminating taste buds. Who can argue with that?

Pickle x

WTF?!

Crackers, Gumdrop? Crackers?!?! It's like punishment for enjoying the cookie challenge too much.

Like my aversion to rhubarb and chocolate, I loathe cooked stawberries (why do I keep objecting to the cookies in the cookie carnival? They're cookies for god's sake. By their very nature, they can't be bad). Instead, I shall be baking some dried cherry and white chocolate cookies in honour of Canada Day.

And looking for cracker recipes. I suppose I could rouse some excitment by contemplating the fine cheese that will go with them.

Patriotically yours,
P

Strawberries In Cookie Form...

Dear Pickle:

Just under the wire, I finished my Strawberry-Shortcake Cookies for this month's Cookie Carnival. Recipe from the inimitable Ms. Stewart (bow before her, and wear a clean apron because it WILL be inspected.)

They look cute, don't they? With Canada Day coming up tomorrow, a cookie that's a riff on a strawberry shortcake seemed perfect. I'll be toting them to a barbecue. It's an interesting recipe, kinda like a pie crust recipe. You rub the butter into the flour and then add some cream to bring the dough together and then fold in diced strawberries. It's a soothingly old school prep, and I felt a bit like Ma in 'Little House on the Prairie'.

I remember reading once that it violates the whole 'thing' of a strawberry to cook it. That heat turns them flabby and evaporates their bright but ephemeral flavour... Can't say I disagree generally. These are - nice. I know. Not the biggest compliment in the world. For me, they just weren't sweet enough really. But I fully admit to having twenty sweet teeth, so I thought this could be just me. They're certainly lovely and tender and the nice pioneer feeling carries through.

But then Mr. Salty pronounced them 'not up to your usual standard'. Ouchie! And HE (who, as we know, prefers salt to sweet and so doesn't share my juvenile sense of taste) thought they weren't sweet enough either. (Full disclosure - I WAS mom-baking. Which means I was also making dinner, listening to NPR, checking for work emails, doing laundry, corralling small kids and drinking. Just kidding on the drinking. But it IS possible I missed one tablespoon of the sugar. But it seems to me also that 7 tbsp of sugar is NOT a lot of sugar for three-and-a-half dozen cookies. Right?)

So it's back to the drawing board for another cookie to represent our country! Any ideas...? Blueberry and maple syrup? Something molasses-y for our easterly friends? A thumbprint cookie with butter tart filling? I'm open!

xxx,
Gumdrop

This One's For Polly

Dear Pickle:

Oh! Now I am in love with your Meme too! As a person who takes (too much!) comfort in food when having a terrible day, it is nice to know that food WRITING brought an undeserving bad-day victim a little solace. Maybe I will try re-reading your blog entries next time I want to cry (instead of, y'know, eating frosting by the spoonful...)

The Faux-reos got me intrigued about other supermarket staples that people used to make from scratch. A lot of my bread-baking books have recipes for (drum roll please) - CRACKERS.

Let's see if our home-made crackers leave Mr. Christie in the dust!!! (I don't mean the dust at the bottom of a cracker bag, but actual dust.)

xxx
Gumdrop

Cookies = Love, part 2

Sometimes when your day starts badly – you show up to a morning appointment that’s been canceled, you spill coffee down the front of your dress, your husband is a trillion miles away and wants to talk about banking, – you can barely contemplate what the rest of the week will hold without the specter of a few sad tears fogging up your vision But then you read something really simple and lovely like the existence of a homemade Oreo and suddenly there’s a little bit of sunshine back in your day.

And it’s nice to know that someone else knows the illicit joy of frosting made with shortening. It was my Dutch grandmother’s secret weapon in creating a pure white frosting that sustained the heat of summer better than butter. Add in some Dutch cocoa powder for Meme’s Chocolate Frosting and spread it over yellow cake for one of my grandfather’s favourite snacks (nb: she’s a Meme not an Oma because she married a Red Cross worker from Quebec during the war. And yes, cake was an acceptable snack at their house as it should be at every grandparents' house).

Cookies,
Pickle

Cookies = Love

Dear Pickle:

Your mom said 'turd'? About cookies? Heheheheh! That is the best thing that happened this week.

I LOVE your disappearing cookie photos. The fact that you can 'whip' things up at the cottage. That your hubbo gets bribery cookies (very smart) to greet his Yukon crew. That you forgive me all my transgressions - even rhubarb and chocolate. So! On to the challenge!

You know that I love frosting. I love icing. I love glaze. I love most things that are called ‘topping’ (yes, even including ‘that’. Especially with Jell-o.) I have been known to discard the bottom parts of cupcakes if no one is looking and just use the ‘muffin top’ part of the cupcake as a buttercream delivery system.

For this reason, it is rather strange that I have never made a sandwich cookie, the kind that is filled with sweet, sweet frosting/icing/what-you-will. Maybe it’s because I like to make things with big yields (Little Miss Greedy) and you have to use two cookies to make each sandwich cookie, thereby halving the number of cookies you end up with. How is that fair? But your challenge seemed the perfect opportunity to stretch my cookie-making skills over into the filled arena. (And an excuse to make frosting.)

I made these chocolate sandwich cookies with a creamy filling. Perhaps you’ve heard of their supermarket counterparts… Yes, I made Faux-Reos. That isn’t my overly cutesy name, that’s the moniker bestowed by the King Arthur Flour cookie book. Cutesy names aside, I am a little bit obsessed with this book. It is filled with old school cookie recipes, but I am obsessed mainly for one practical reason.

Have I sermonized to you yet about the wonders of using a kitchen scale? It makes baking about a thousand times easier if you don’t have to fiddle with cups. Not to mention more accurate. Throw in a Kitchenaid and you can have a batch of cookies in the oven in mere moments. Alas, most North American recipe books use the old cups system and you have to find not only European/British cookbooks, but also European/British editions of those cookbooks to cook using weight. Except for the wonderful bakers behind the King Arthur test kitchen in Vermont! Their blog, here, is for my money the best how-to baking blog on the net and a MUST READ. (If you need to be convinced of the merits of baking by weight, just make one batch of peanut butter cookies with a scale – i.e. without scraping the sticky stuff in and out of measuring cups – and you will be a convert. I did that but they didn't survive long enough to be photographed!)

These are made from a very soft cocoa dough, which you must chill for at least a few hours before rolling out. Even after an overnight chill, I still had to roll them out on a Silpat with loads of flour. (And NOW I read on their blog a different recipe that doesn't seem to require rolling out and looks way cuter than mine... Damnit!) The filling is – well, there are some things you wish you could un-know. One of these things for me is that the centers of Oreos are, apparently, largely shortening. Blurgh. The shortening gets beaten with a lot of icing sugar and a little dissolved gelatin, with vanilla for flavour.

The results were more delicate than a supermarket Oreo, a reminder that sometimes less flavour is more. Subtle cocoa cookies sandwiching a filling that whispers of vanilla. Old fashioned and gentle and delicate, they were totally picnic worthy. The wafers had a crispy quality you would never find in a preserved, shelf-stable substitute and it played off the filling in a way real Oreos could only dream of. I’m glad my little guys tasted them before they ever tasted the commercial variety – although we’re just not going to think about how the health effects of all the shortening was consumed in my house this week.

Thanks for fitting such a tasty challenge between the crispy cocoa wafers of my life. What a big yield!

X

Gumdrop
p.s. I am like a cookbook pusher.

p.p.s. I too made a crazy chocolate chip cookie variation this week for a visit to my parents/brother's cottage - a summery and off-beat combo of Dried Blueberries, White Chocolate Chips and Slivered Almonds. Photo to follow.

p.p.p.s. New challenge tomorrow!!!

p.p.p.p.s. I will be your kid and eat your cookies after school. I will also accept cake and milk, like Harriet The Spy.